Cosmic Rays from the Ankle to the Cut-Off

Recent advances in measuring and interpreting cosmic rays from the spectral ankle to the highest energies are briefly reviewed. The prime question at the highest energies is about the origin of the flux suppression observed at E ~ 4x10^{19} eV. Is this the long awaited GZK-effect or the exhaustion of sources? The key to answering this question will be provided by the largely unknown mass composition at the highest energies. The high level of isotropy observed even at the highest energies challenges models of a proton dominated composition if extragalactic magnetic fields are on the order of a few nG or less. We shall discuss the experimental and theoretical progress in the field and the prospects for the next decade.Comment: Invited review prepared for Comptes Rendus Physique (2014), in pres

The Pierre Auger Observatory -Status and Prospects -

The southern Pierre Auger Observatory is presently under construction in Malargue, Mendoza, Argentina. It combines two complementary air shower observation techniques; the detection of particles at ground and the observation of associated fluorescence light generated in the atmosphere above the ground. Experimentally, this is being realised by employing an array of 1600 water Cherenkov detectors, distributed over an area of 3000 km^2, and operating 24 wide-angle Schmidt telescopes, positioned at four sites at the border of the ground array. The Observatory will reach its full size in 2006. However, with the 540 tanks and 12 telescopes presently in operation, the Pierre Auger Observatory has become the largest world-wide cosmic ray experiment already now. This paper sketches the experimental set-up and discusses the current status. In parallel to the ongoing completion of the experiment, a large number of events have been detected with energies above 10^19 eV. The data are used to verify both the performance of the individual detector components as well as to test the quality of the hybrid event reconstruction. All results obtained so far are very promising and they underline the great advantages of the chosen hybrid approach.Comment: Invited highlight paper presented at XIII ISVHECRI, Pylos (Greece), Sept. 2004 8 pages, 10 figures, to appear in Nucl. Phys. B (Proc. Suppl.